what i heard democrats talk about if they can hold ohio, hold wisconsin, paul ryan's home state, hold nevada, they could lose all other swing states, lose the congressional district in maine and come out with exactly 270 electoral votes. gwen: you add it up that way, john? >> that sounds very powerful. what i am struck by is there hasn't been any mystery about this. if you go further than a year ago, president obama's team was very straightforward. they expected it was going to be mitt romney. they were going to make him very unacceptable. the wealthy and out of touch background. they did that. they had a micro targeted micromessage strategy. they said what they were going to do. and stuck to that strategy seems to be with remarkable discipline. if it works, they look really, really smart. the difference between being really smart and really dumb -- [laughter] >> what's remarkable is that they broadcast that, right? >> and the romney campaign never -- or his allies never came up to say, boy, if they're going to do this we should probably define mitt romney. we better define him positively be